The national musical instrument of Trinidad and Tobago is the steelpan musical instrument. It can be referred to by a variety of terms, such as “steelpan,” “pan,” “steel drum,” “steel band,” or “steel orchestra.” The origins of the steelpan are generally traced back to the early part of the World War II around 1939 in Trinidad and Tobago and are often considered a product of chance and circumstance more than anything else.
What started as the hammering out of a few notes on biscuit tins, dustbin lids, and empty caustic soda drums eventually gave way to hammering out of notes in the 55 gallon steel drums that led to the “steel drum” namesake. This took much hammering of the metal and investment of many hours by the creators and early pioneers of what is now familiar as the steelpan instrument.
Traditionally, the initial sinking of a convex shape in constructing the steelpan instrument continues to be a laborious and delicate operation involving much careful hammering. The process tends to be fraught with uncertainty and can quickly turn catastrophic in terms of lost or wasted hours of labor should the metal develop a crack at any period during the process. Given the wide and generally unknown variation in metal composition of the recycled 55 gallon drums commonly used as the starting piece for a steelpan instrument, additional unpredictability is introduced into the process, and the failure rate becomes a concern. Moreover, there can often be a latent safety risk of using recycled drums. For example, the instrument maker can receive a drum still having remnants of chemicals, which can be unknown or can remain even after a thorough cleaning.
Thus, although traditional methods of fabricating steelpan instruments have for generations produced instruments beloved by many, such traditional fabrication techniques can be subject to significant uncertainty, inefficiency, and/or health risks for the instrument makers.